First hang around the ocean, not a nice beach part, but a rocky coastline with a nearby fishing village, abandoned or functioning, or strike up a conversation with an obsessive sailboat sailor, or something along those lines, before reading Melville. Its beauty is in the total immersion in things nautical and the sea. Once in, I couldn't leave.
Meanwhile, I have to get a hold of Dickens again, whose work I abandoned reading after a poor intro during college, where they overloaded us and I had to skim books that are designed for total immersion.
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